A Snake Playing the French Horn

The garden is the perfect place to be on spring days that make you feel like skipping. But obviously skipping wouldn't be in keeping with the image I'm trying to project. I'm not entirely sure what I'm projecting it onto, seeing as most people I've met recently have asked me about a smell that made me faint, and the image's projector needs to be switched off while I'm talking about that. It's an image of sophistication, of a man who's seen it all and done it all, who'll never come across anything to make him skip or shoot randomly into the air.

My cousin Charlie went to a soccer match with some friends one afternoon. It wasn't much of a match, but it was too fine a day to complain about the quality of the play. Even the goalkeeper didn't complain when the ref booked him for eating biscuits.

Charlie was in his study in the evening, wondering what to do to pass the time. He looked out the window and he saw a garden hose attached to a brass tap. In his mind he saw a snake playing a French horn, and he decided to make a sketch of this image in his mind.

He sat down at his desk. He got a blank sheet of paper, and with a pencil he drew a line to represent the ground, but the line kept going after he lifted the pencil off the paper. The line left the page and went onto the desk, where it headed for the wall. When it got to the wall it went to the door and left the room. Charlie stared in shock at the grey line across the wall. He couldn't say how long he stood there looking at it, but eventually he wondered what the line was doing outside the room and he followed it. It led him down the hall and out the front door. There was a perfectly straight line down his driveway, and it went right when it got to the road. He ran after it.

He ran down a quiet country road until he was out of breath. He knew he'd never overtake the line, so he stopped running, and he walked after it instead.

The line turned into the driveway of one of his neighbours. The house was on the side of a hill. The tarmac drive rose to the front of the house, where its owner, Jimmy, was playing the trumpet outside the front door.

Charlie went up to him. He saw that the line had drawn a circle around Jimmy and then go back down the driveway. Charlie told Jimmy about the line that started with his drawing of a snake playing the French horn.

"Don't talk about snakes," Jimmy said.

"Why not?"

"Because I have a fear of crabs."

"What does that have to do with snakes?"

"Snakes remind me of crabs."

"What else reminds you of crabs?"

"Lots of things. Beaches. Rock pools. Lobsters. Batman. Have you ever wanted to knee Batman in the groin?"

"Do you want to do that because of your fear of crabs?"

"Yeah. I reckon that'd be his one weak spot."

Charlie left to continue his chase of the line. It took him back to the road, still moving away from his house. The people who lived in the next house were having a barbeque. The line kept going, and it took a right turn down a narrow road with grass in the middle. He walked into the shade when he passed an old abandoned house surrounded by trees. The next house was a few hundred yards further on, and this was where the line was heading for.

It went up the driveway and it entered the house through the front door. There was a garden at the back and at the sides of the house. The edge of the garden was delineated by a fence, and beyond the fence there was a field. Charlie didn't see how he could find the line if it disappeared into a field.

He rang the doorbell, and a woman opened the door. Her name was Vivien. He told her about the line, and he asked her if he could follow it. She traced its course with him, but they didn't have to go far. The line stopped on the wall in her hall.

"I'm terribly sorry about this," Charlie said. "It just got away from me, and I wasn't able to keep up with it."

"That's okay."

"It started with a drawing of a snake playing the French horn, but I only drew a single line. And this is it."

"Why don't you finish your drawing on the wall?"

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. It would look odd with just a single line."

Charlie had the pencil with him, and he drew the snake playing the French horn.

"I like it," she said. "I think the grey of the pencil works well on the cream-coloured wall. All it needs is a frame."

She got some red paint and painted a frame around his drawing. They looked at it, and they wondered what it could mean.

"Why do you think the line led you here?" she said.

"I don't know. Maybe there's no reason for it."

"I drew a wine glass on the notepad next to the telephone table." She showed him the drawing. "But I didn't know what I was doing as I was doing it. And it doesn't make any more sense in the context of a snake playing the French horn."

"I hope you don't have an aversion to snakes," he said.

"I don't mind snakes. But I prefer turtles."

She showed him the turtles in her aquarium.

"I called them John, Paul, Ringo and George after The Beatles. Someone said that calling turtles after Beatles was like calling cats after ostriches, but I've never come across a beetle with a name. I suppose ostriches would have names. But I've never met anyone with an ostrich."

"Do you like The Beatles?"

"I don't mind them. But I prefer The Rolling Stones. That person who objected to calling turtles after Beatles wouldn't object to calling them after The Stones because she gives names to the stones in her garden. She has to determine what sex they are first."

"How does she do that?"

"I don't know. I didn't want to pry too deeply into that. Because I didn't think I'd be prying into the physical make-up of stones, but rather into her own mental constitution."

"Yeah. It's not something you'd need to know anyway."

"No. Life's complicated enough already."

Charlie wondered if the other end of the line had moved. He said he should go back to check on it, and she said she'd like to see it too.

So the two of them followed the line back towards Charlie's place. They stopped outside the abandoned house. They thought they heard the sound of a tuba somewhere. The birds were singing to the sound.

"Maybe the line is trying to draw a picture," she said. "It's assembling various constituent parts to create a whole. Or else it's just putting together a band."

"It could have just drawn a circle around the turtles if it wanted a band."

"It could. Although they'd be more like a boyband, rather than The Beatles."

"They've got their image. They all look alike. The birds could do the singing and the turtles just need to learn how to lip synch."

They walked on again. Jimmy was still playing the trumpet outside his house. They stopped to listen for a while. Charlie wondered if he should mention the turtles to see if they reminded him of crabs to remind him of kneeing Batman in the groin, but he didn't think it was the sort of thing he should be talking about in front of Vivien.

They walked on to Charlie's house. He took her to his study and showed her the sheet of paper where he'd started the drawing. The other end of the line had moved, but it didn't seem to know what it was doing. It just kept going around and around on the page.

"That could be a snake too," Vivien said. "You just need to add a French horn to the end of it."

Charlie drew the French horn. "This end must be the head of the snake if it's playing the French horn," he said. "And the end of the snake is the ground where the other snake sits in your house."

"I wonder if that end has moved since you drew a French horn to curtail the movement of this end."

They went back to her house. The line was trying to escape from the frame, but it couldn't get out. The red paint was still wet, so she got a cloth and removed some of it. The line left through the gap in the paint. It went back down the hall towards the door and left the house.

Charlie said there was no point in trying to keep up with it. They walked slowly after it, and it led them to a quiet country pub. They followed the line inside, but it disappeared under a door. There was a pane of frosted glass in the top half of the door, and on the glass the word 'Private' was written in red letters. There was a door to the right and another to the left, and each one had a similar pane of frosted glass. They went for the door that bore the word 'Lounge'. The light shining through the glass made it seem more appealing.

They stepped inside and saw a huge window facing the setting sun. There was a small stage at the other end of the lounge. The man who owned the pub had married a soprano who had performed in operas all over the world. He wanted to add a bit of culture to the pub, and he wanted something to replace the table quizzes, which were too taxing on people's minds. His wife was able to kill both those birds with one stone. She used to sing in a language she made up herself, and then the audience had to guess what she was singing about. If you guessed correctly, you'd win a prize. There was a fifty-fifty chance that she was singing about a teapot. There was also a fifty-fifty chance that you'd win a teapot.

She arrived on the stage shortly after Charlie bought drinks for himself and Vivien. They sat at a table near the window. The soprano started singing. Charlie couldn't help thinking of a snake as he looked at the movement of her hands and listened to the flow of her voice from syllable to syllable.

When she finished her song, he put up a hand and said, "Were you singing about a snake playing the French horn?"

She looked at him without saying a word. Everyone in the lounge looked at him without saying a word. He eventually broke the silence himself when he added, "With a scarf."

"Yes," she said. Charlie won a toaster for that. He got a round of applause. It was really the line they should have been applauding. It had drawn the snake wearing a scarf and playing the French horn on the wall next to the stairs behind the door marked 'Private'. She had seen it on her way down to the lounge.

When the applause died down, the singer said, "It's their own fault they hear the sad sounds on the summer days they find themselves embedded in. They make poems out of smoke from cigarettes and knit jumpers out of sheep on the hills, and so on they go into gone to stand on the hills and beat the living hat dance out of the people who say, 'Well yeah, I don't really know, it's your fault.'"

Someone put up a hand and said, "Was that about a teapot?"

"Yeah," she said, "it was." She smiled broadly.

The moose's head over the fireplace likes a neighbour of ours called Rose who sings him old Irish songs. The wife's uncle likes her too. He says she reminds him of a woman he knew who trained her dogs to jump into the side of a caravan.

Colin's House

We've had some snow over the past few days. The mountain tops have a beautiful white icing in the sun. The dog likes the cold weather. I suppose you'd prefer winter to summer if you had a fur coat you couldn't take off.

My cousin Hugh walked to Uncle Cyril's house on a Saturday afternoon in July. Cyril lived a mile away, down a narrow twisting road lined with trees. He was in the garden when Hugh arrived.

"I met Walter on the way," Hugh said. "He said he had to shoot a badger."

"Fair play to him."

"It was self-defence, he said. But the badger didn't die, so he had to take it to the vet, and now he's nursing it back to health. But the badger keeps biting him. He's lost count of the number of injections he's had to get."

"He'd lose count after two if he's stupid enough to get bitten repeatedly by the thing he shot."

"I asked him if he was going to shoot it again after he nursed it back to health. He said he hadn't decided yet. I suppose it depends on how many times the badger bites him."

"Nursing a badger. Sure God help us. You go out and shoot something and you end up being a nurse. It's typical of the way the world is heading."

"Colin's house looked a bit lop-sided when I passed it."

"He hasn't come out in days. I suppose we should pay him a visit."

Colin lived in a two-storey timber house in the middle of a small field. There was no garden because he preferred the natural beauty of the field with its long grass, wild flowers, gorse bushes and moss-covered rocks. Inside, the rooms were small and the ceilings were low, but he liked this too because it had the feeling of an old country cottage.

He had to re-build the house every day. It always fell down in the morning as soon as he stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He kept the crockery and the glasses in a wooden box so they wouldn't break when the house collapsed. Sometimes a window pane would break, but the house's collapse was becoming less chaotic each day, almost as if it was learning how to neatly fold away all the walls and windows and doors, so the glass was normally left unbroken. The pine staircase often remained intact. The red tiles in the hall were never damaged.

He used to phone work and say he couldn't come in because he had to re-build his house. His boss, Dave, had been understanding. Dave was understanding about almost everything, even though he understood almost nothing. He once had a falcon. He let it go in the hills and watched it fly away till it became a dot in the blue sky, and then disappeared. He waited there for hours. He looked closely at every dot in the sky, expecting each one to be the falcon, but the bird never came back. He thought there was a valuable lesson for life in that. He didn't know what it was, but he knew its value. The advantage of not knowing what it was, but knowing its value, was that he could apply it to any situation. This was to Colin's advantage too. When he kept phoning to say he couldn't come into work because his house fell down, Dave understood because it was like the time his falcon flew away and didn't come back.

At first, Colin was frustrated by the constant collapsing. He believed that the house could stay together if it wanted to. It survived storms. He tried living in a tent for a while, and he pretended that he didn't care about the house. He used to play the guitar and write songs. One of them included the line: "I don't know why people live in a house, just to attract an appropriate spouse."

It was the potential spouse he was trying to attract that led him back to the house. The appropriate spouse for a man who lives in a tent would be someone like the woman who talks to the breeze, if she wasn't already married to a tree.

He was already engaged to Carol, and she wasn't happy with the tent. So he built the house again, and it fell apart again. He resigned himself to re-building the house every day. Dave said he knew exactly how he felt.

As each day passed, he started to enjoy re-building it more and more. On some summer mornings he'd sit on top of the stairs and look out over the land before starting work on the re-build. There was a museum nearby that had a similar problem to Colin's house. Bits of it were falling off every few weeks. It was a museum of local history. It contained artefacts recovered from archaelogical digs, and exhibits on past incarnations of the museum. It had been falling down since the twenties. They had to re-build it from scratch at least twice a year, and it was due for another total re-build. Colin often helped them with it because he enjoyed building so much. The timber in his house never broke. Re-building it was like building with Lego. He had done it so often he could have it finished by mid-afternoon, so he was able to go into work for a few hours.

But Carol still wasn't happy, and with good reason. The house didn't seem to like her. When she arrived for dinner one evening, one side of the house fell down, the side where the dining room was. On another occasion it fell down when she knocked on the front door. Colin was out at the time. When he came back he blamed her for the collapse and she was furious. She gave him an ultimatum: her or the house.

He told her he loved the house, mainly because of the location. "Fine," she said. "There's nothing wrong with the location, as long as the field doesn't start falling down too. But I'm sending an architect out to look at the house. Surely he can find a way of keeping it upright."

Colin didn't like the idea of an architect interfering with his house, and he knew he wouldn't like the architect either. Carol said he was highly respected as an architect and product designer. His spoons were works of art. When he was designing a building he always started by designing the shadow it would cast. He often included electric fences in the plans to keep stray animals from interfering with the shadow. 'Animals' included certain humans who didn't match his design specifications. He believed that visitors had to cast a shadow that was in keeping with the building. If he had his way, only people who wore designer shadows would be allowed in.

The architect arrived in a long black car. He stepped out, removed his hat and hit a tuning fork off his head. He said it was to tune his head. It sounded out of tune to Colin.

Colin didn't trust the architect, so he sent him to the museum to work on that before letting him do anything to the house. And Colin was hoping that the architect would never even step inside his house. If it didn't fall down so often, he might be able to convince Carol to change her opinion of it.

The house had never fallen down while he was in it, so he decided to stay inside. He stayed there for three days and it didn't fall down, the longest it had ever gone without a collapse. But it was making some very strange creaking sounds. When he leant against a wall he could feel the house leaning to one side.

When Hugh and Cyril went there they were afraid to knock on the door in case the house fell over. Hugh shouted 'hello', and they heard Colin say, "I'm up here."

"Where?"

"Go to the side of the house."

One of the upstairs windows was open at the gable end. They could see Colin's hand holding onto the window frame. "I'd make ye a cup of tea," he said, "but I'm too afraid to move."

Cyril had a tall wooden step-ladder in his shed. He went to get it with Hugh. They brought it to Colin's house and put it up outside the window. Hugh climbed it and looked in.

Colin was holding onto the window frame with one hand, and the other was clutching the wire for the lightbulb in the centre of the ceiling.

"I think the house is going to fall over if I let go," he said.

"Hmm," Hugh said. "That's a tricky one. This is going to take a bit of thought to figure out."

As Hugh tried to figure it out, a wasp flew around his head. He swung his hand at it, but he lost his balance, and the step-ladder fell against the side of the house. The house started to fall to the other side. The window frame came off. Hugh caught Colin's hand and Cyril caught the bottom of the ladder. Hugh held onto the ladder with his legs. Cyril dug his heels into the ground and he was able to stop the house falling over, with the help of the ladder which was attached to Hugh who was attached to Colin.

It was this attachment to Colin that worried Hugh. He was a candidate in a local election and he was afraid that the press would find out about him holding hands with another man in the other man's bedroom. They could portray it in the wrong way.

Hugh called for help, and a few minutes later Walter arrived. Cyril said he needed help to hold the ladder, but Walter couldn't hold anything because both of his hands were bandaged.

"Is that because of the badger?" Cyril said.

Walter paused before answering 'no'.

"Go and find help so," Cyril said.

"I could go to the museum to get the architect and the builders."

"What did he say?" Colin said from upstairs.

"Nothing," Cyril shouted up to Colin. "It was something about a badger I can't repeat." Cyril turned to Walter and whispered, "Go and get them. Now."

Walter left. He returned ten minutes later with the architect and the builders. Colin knew something was going on. He thought he heard the sound of a tuning fork striking a head, but Hugh convinced him he was hearing things.

Colin couldn't bring a telephone wire into the house because of the frequent collapses, so he built a telephone kiosk in the field. The kiosk often fell down too. There was a telephone pole next to the kiosk. The architect got the builders to cut down the pole and lean it against the side of the house.

When the pole was in place, Cyril let go of the ladder. The house creaked as it came to a rest against the pole, but it didn't fall over, and it hasn't fallen down since then, even though it's very lop-sided. The pole is still preventing its collapse, but the house is solid. It couldn't fall over if it tried.

Colin started building wooden houses for other people. He said he had built hundreds of them, but he didn't say they were all the same one and they all fell down, apart from one that stays upright with the help of a pole.

The moose's head over the fireplace knew that Kauto Star would win the Gold Cup, but he couldn't possibly have predicted what would happen in the sporting world on Saint Patrick's Day. Ireland missed out on the Six Nations because of a last-minute try for the French, but we beat Pakistan in the cricket. I say 'we' but it's a sport I've never followed and I wouldn't have been able to name any Irish players a few days ago, apart from the one who plays for England. Now I know Trent Johnson, the Australian. If 'God Save the Queen' can be played on the sacred ground of Croke Park, and England can do us a favour by losing to us and beating the French, with the help of an Irish man, then it must be okay to support an Irish team in a sport as English as cricket. They did give us centuries of occupation, but they gave us Cheltenham as well.

The Followers

We've had some nice Spring weather recently. The wife's aunt has started painting scenes from the garden. She's putting all of the scenes together into a single painting that's dominated by a fork. A real fork. She says she needed a new direction because she'd gone as far as she could go with representational art. I think it's probably down to a change in medication. The wife thinks she's been eating mushrooms she found in the forest again. She briefly moved into abstract art a few years ago when she drank something she found at the end of a long twisting path surrounded by rabbits who had tiny multi-coloured umbrellas attached to their heads to keep off the rain and the sun (she probably found it at the start of the path).

My cousin Albert sat at a table in a pub on a May afternoon. He was with two of his friends, Morris and Andrea. It was a huge pub, and there were only a few other people in it. There were three bars. Albert and his friends were near the bar at the back of the pub.

There was no one at the front. The bar there was lit up by the hazy sun through the frosted glass on the doors. There was a pint of Guinness, and nothing else, on the bar. There were no fingerprints on the glass (the bar man had used a cloth to place it there, before disappearing himself). The bell rang when the door opened. A man walked to the bar. He looked at the pint for a few seconds and then drank it in one go. He put the glass back on the bar and looked up at the ceiling. "I would arise and go now, if I was sitting down," he said.

The faint sound of a voice could be heard from elsewhere in the pub. The voice belonged to Morris, who was talking to Andrea. He was wearing a suit.

"I love music that reminds me of elephants," he said. "Tubas. I'd love to be able to punch a tuba player in the stomach while he's playing, just to hear what it sounds like. There once was a time when you could shoot elephants and punch tuba players, but now you can only shoot elephants."

"I thought I heard something," Albert said.

"It's strange when you look at red things or black things and say, 'That'd look better if it was blue.' 'Strange' is probably the wrong word. I throw words around like beer mats and put the beer down wherever they land. The beer is the real idea. 'I drink a lot' -- I suppose that's what I'm trying to say."

She stared back at him. She didn't move when he stopped talking. For a second he got the impression that she was a clock, and he leant closer to hear the 'tick tock', but that was coming from the clock on the wall.

"I think Mr. Mulcahy is here," Albert said. They had arranged to meet Mr. Mulcahy in the pub. His name used to be 'Barry' but he had it changed to 'Mr.'. He told Morris he had a job for them. The sort of jobs he'd have wouldn't be advertised in papers, and they wouldn't be the sort of thing you'd advertise to the police. But Albert, Andrea and Morris needed the money, and it was difficult to say no to Mr. Mulcahy.

They went to the front of the pub. Mr. Mulcahy was looking at the empty pint glass. He said hello to them, and asked them how they were, and said he was glad to hear they were in good health. Then he took an envelope from an inside pocket. "I want ye to follow this woman," he said. He took a black-and-white photo from the envelope. "Go to her house this evening and follow her when she leaves. I want ye to tell me where she goes. It's as simple as that. Ye'll find her address in the envelope, and there's a little spending money in there too. Ye'll get the rest when the job is done."

He left the pub. They stood there in silence until Morris said to Andrea, "What time is it?" and started laughing before she could answer.

At half-seven that evening, they were sitting in a car on the street where the woman lived. There was a row of Georgian houses along one side of the street and at the other side there was a small park. Morris was still talking to Andrea. "I often wonder why," he said. "Just a general all-purpose 'why'. A circle that will fit in any square or triangle. Sometimes the 'why' takes on a more specific shape, like 'why am I looking at a red dot?' I suppose what I'm trying to say is I find myself looking at things at times."

Albert kept looking at the front door of the woman's house, and at ten-to-eight he saw it open. The woman walked down the steps to the pavement and turned left. She walked towards them. She was tall and blond, the two things Albert most liked to see holding hands with an 'and'. He tried to act cool around women like that, but events always seemed to be conspiring against him. He never liked 'events'. They were always following him around, waiting for a chance to make a fool of him. The conspiracy of events once made a swan chase him away just as he was about to kiss a woman in the park. And here was another beautiful woman, but he was about to follow her to see where she goes, and then pass on the information to a man you wouldn't want to talk to unless you wanted trouble. Another victory for events.

They looked down as she walked past the car, and when she reached the corner of the street they got out and followed her.

"I don't like the idea of getting her into trouble," Albert said. "Why don't we give Mr. Mulcahy the wrong information?"

"Maybe the wrong information would get her into more trouble," Andrea said.

"We could say she went to the shop to get some milk. That couldn't possibly get her into trouble."

"It would if he wants her to go somewhere else."

"Maybe. Let's just wait and see what she does, and then we can decide what would be best for her."

She was walking down a wide brightly-lit pavement in the city centre when her phone rang. She stopped to answer it, and they stopped too. They looked around as they waited there. Albert noticed a man standing about twenty yards behind them. The three of them looked at him, and he smiled at them.

The woman walked on again before she finished the call. They followed her. Albert looked back when they got to the corner of the street and he saw the man following them.

"We're being followed," Morris said. "But the question is, why is he following us?"

"Maybe Mr. Mulcahy thought we'd deliberatly give him the wrong information," Andrea said, "so he sent out this man just to make sure."

"Well why send us to do the job at all?" Albert said. "Why didn't he just send that man?"

"Because he doesn't trust any of us. He thinks we might lie to him if we were on our own, and he thinks that man might lie if we weren't there."

"That's one possibility," Morris said. "It's also possible that he's with the woman we're following."

"We should try to lose him so," Albert said. "If it turns out that he was sent out by Mr. Mulcahy, how were we supposed to know that?"

"How are we going to lose him?"

"We'll split up. He can only follow one of us. We have a one in three chance of throwing him off the trail."

They stopped at a corner. Albert and Morris looked back at the man, who had stopped too. Andrea kept an eye on the woman. They waited until Andrea said, "She's gone into an art gallery."

They walked on. Andrea went into the art gallery, Morris went to a hotel, and Albert walked down a side-street.

The man behind them chose to follow Albert, and it was at this point that Albert noticed a flaw in his plan. He used to have safety in numbers, but now he was alone, pursued by a stranger on a dark side-street.

He thought of Griffith, a friend of his. Griffith lived in this area, and maybe he could help. At least Albert would feel safer with company, even though Griffith wasn't the ideal man for the job. His brain was often tuned into higher things, above the practicalities of everyday life. And when it wasn't dealing with the higher things it was dealing with lower things, which were just as impractical, like where to find a woman who'd wear an ill-fitting nurse's uniform and was willing to recite ancient Norse texts for reasons far-removed from the promotion of ancient Norse literature. From there it was just a short jump back into the higher things.

Albert phoned Griffith, who said he was hiding behind a bin on the alley next to the Italian restaurant.

"I'll be passing there in a few minutes," Albert said. "There's a man following me. I want you to follow him. It might distract him enough to allow me to get away."

Griffith saw Albert and his pursuer pass by, and then he joined the pursuit himself. It was only when he was out on the street that he remembered why he'd been hiding. He had organised a show in the college theatre and he booked an act called 'Professor Plingerten and his psychic dogs'. It sounded like the perfect combination of high and low. The professor had three dogs. Members of the audience would look into the eyes of the dogs, who would read their minds. Then the professor would read the minds of the dogs. He was able to tell the audience members various details about their lives and what would happen to them in the future (it was the dogs who could see into the future, not the professor).

Members of a criminal gang were having a private conversation with a man at the back of a hotel when they noticed that one of the dogs was looking at them. When they found out that it was one of Professor Plingerten's dogs they were keen to have a chat with the professor. They were afraid that the dog would tell him the details of their conversation. They had been trying to track the professor down. Griffith took him and his dogs to a safe house. He arranged for a van to take them out of the city after midnight, and he was on his way to the professor to tell him about this when he noticed that he was being followed by four men in dark suits. He managed to lose them, and he hid behind the bins.

As he was following the man who was following Albert, he looked around and he saw the four men following him again. Professor Plingerten was in the safe house at the time, pacing from one end of the room to the other. The three dogs watched him go back and forth. They probably knew what he was thinking.

Albert came to a street with a car park at one side. He looked back to make sure Griffith was there, and he stopped when he saw the four men following all of them. The man who was immediately behind him looked around and stopped as well. Griffith kept going. He already knew what was behind him. He always said that his brain could deal with anything the world throws at him when he's under extreme pressure. The rest of the time it can barely deal with the real world at all, which leads him into many situations where he feels extreme pressure. Here was another example of his brain coming up with the goods when he was up against it. He went to the man who was following Albert, and he said, "Ah, Professor Plingerten, how nice to see you again."

He winked a few times at the man, who didn't know how to respond so he didn't respond at all. The four men surrounded him. One of them said, "We need to have a chat about something your dog might have said."

He still didn't say anything. His dog had once said something like 'jet', but it could have been 'jut' too.

Albert was able to get away. He phoned Morris, who said he was in a restaurant with Andrea. Albert went to meet them.

He joined them at a table. Morris was in the middle of explaining his theory on ceilings.

Albert asked where the woman went to. "She's over there," Andrea said as she pointed towards a booth in the corner.

Albert stood up and looked. He saw the woman kissing a man. Albert wanted to pass on the right information then, but Mr. Mulcahy probably already knew because he was the man she was kissing.

The moose's head over the fireplace did reasonably well with his tips on the first day of Cheltenham. It was impossible to predict some of the races. He's tipping Ireland to win the Six Nations (that's rugby) on Saturday, but there could be some national bias in that. Not that the moose is originally from Ireland, but it's Saint Patrick's day on Saturday, so it's only natural to be biased towards Ireland. He's yet to express an opinion on the cause of the wife's aunt's new artistic direction. We're still taking bets on that.

The Quiz

The dog keeps barking at one of the trees in the garden. My great-grandfather once claimed to have seen the ghost of a cat in that tree, but he tended to perceive the world through rose-tinted glasses. He believed that death was the most desirable quality a cat could have.

My uncle Harry often goes to a small country pub about half a mile from his house. It's an old pub. The regulars don't mind the dirt on the floor or the things on the ceiling that would be classified as dirt if they didn't occasionally move. The pub is owned by a man called Dan, and every so often he feels a need to attract new customers. This is why he decided to have a table quiz on a Thursday evening in June.

Dan came up with a few of the questions himself. One of them was 'What happened to Paddy's leg when he went to Swansea on the ferry?'. Harry and the other regulars in the pub were hoping that someone would know the truth, but each team came up with a different answer. One of the answers was an essay on morals.

Brendan came up with most of the questions. People call him 'College Jackson' because he's so clever, and you'd think that wouldn't be very clever at all, seeing as his surname isn't Jackson. He's never been to college either. They started calling him that after they stopped calling him 'Action Jackson' when he was sixteen, when the cigarettes and alcohol took over and impaired his ability to move around the football field. It impaired his ability to stop throwing bottles at the bus shelter too.

Dan didn't understand most of Brendan's questions, so he just read them without thinking about their meaning. He regretted not putting more thought into the question 'Will you marry me?'. When he read it out, a woman called Delia stood up and said 'yes!'.

Dan was too shocked to respond. Some people shook his hand and congratulated him. Some people laughed. Delia had been engaged to a man called Seamus for seven years, but they had recently split up and she had been wondering if she'd ever get married until Dan popped the question.

When the thought that he was engaged finally sank in, Dan's next thought was to kill Brendan, but he was long gone.

Harry and some of the other regulars sat at the bar that night and listened to Dan's views on marriage, which he summed up with the following line: "No woman with claws is going to get her claws into me."

He accepted that Delia was a fine woman on the surface. He couldn't find fault with the surface, but it's what lurked beneath that frightened him. When she asked questions like 'Have you ever thought about putting flowers on the bar?', he found it terrifying to think of the impulses in her brain that made her say that. He'd prefer if people asked about the blood stains on his shirt. And as Harry pointed out, when you're married you don't get asked questions. Flowers would appear on the bar and stains would disappear from shirts, and he wouldn't have any say in it.

He needed to escape. Harry thought it would be easy for a man like Dan to repulse a woman like Delia. He said to Dan, "Why don't you just tell her about the day you spent trying to get your soup spoon back from a pig. If she doesn't run away screaming, there's something wrong with her."

She didn't run away screaming when Dan told her the story. She just shook her head, and then she said, "This is exactly why you need someone like me. With my help, you'll never do anything like that again."

Dan considered the possibility of never being able to drug a pig again and he wanted to run away screaming.

Harry came up with another plan. The best way to break the engagement would be to re-unite Delia with Seamus, and the local match-maker would be the best person to bring this about. She forced people together and somehow got them to love each other. Harry thought she poisoned them. Her couples would be kicking and screaming when she brings them together, and the next time you see them, you'd need a fire hose to stop them re-enacting the sort of scenes you'd see in the DVDs that Dinge Hoolahan sells from the boot of his car.

Dan invited the match-maker around to the pub and he told her about the need to re-unite Delia and Seamus.

"I just have to make them see what they saw in each other when they were in love," she said. "It's all done with a few carefully chosen words. There are many different aspects to each person. When you're describing someone you can highlight one of those aspects and diminish the others. It might not be the most accurate of descriptions, but it's the one that will capture the heart."

"Right," Dan said. "And it doesn't involve anything you'd put in their tea?"

"That'd be your area of expertise."

"What, alcohol?"

"Well duh."

'Well duh' was right. Dan didn't know why he hadn't thought of that before. Just get them drunk and let nature take its course.

Dan thought it might look suspicious if he plied Delia with drink, so he got his sister to do that in another pub. He invited Seamus around to his pub. He said it was to make sure there were no hard feelings, but Seamus seemed delighted to be separated from Delia. He spent the evening complaining about her. He hated the way she always complained about the fires he started.

Dan kept giving him free drink. At eleven o' clock he got a phone call from his sister to say that she was on her way to the pub with Delia. He took Seamus to the room behind the pub to show him 'something very interesting'. It was a circle drawn on the wall. Seamus found the circle even more entertaining than the Telebubbies.

When Delia arrived, Dan took her into the room and left her there with Seamus. He locked the door.

This is the point when he remembered that drink creates the perfect conditions for violence, as well as for love. Dan and his customers heard noises from the room.

"Are they fighting or is it the other thing they're doing?" Harry said.

"I don't know," Dan said.

He decided to let them at it, whatever it was.

When Dinge Hoolahan came into the pub, Dan got him to listen at the door. He was an expert on these sounds, and he was certain it was the other thing.

They emerged from the room about an hour later, and Delia said she had some bad news for Dan. She couldn't marry him. He hadn't felt so relieved since he got his soup spoon back from the pig.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to Cheltenham next week. He doesn't like horses, but he can tolerate horse racing because of the betting. He's great at spotting a winner. A lot of the neighbours have been calling around and casually mentioning the names of horses just to see the moose's reaction. He reacted negatively to a story one of the neighbours told about a new species of animal he was trying to make.

The Cave

I've heard some very strange bird sounds in the garden. I'm hoping to see some very strange birds, but no luck so far. The wife's uncle would have a story or two to tell at this point if he was here. Apparently bird-watching was popular amongst soldiers in the first World War. The peace of birds must have provided some respite, although the highlight of my limited bird-watching experience was seeing two robins fight over territory. That's not the sort of thing you'd want to see to take your mind off a war. There you are, living in a trench, fighting for years, shelling soldiers in another trench and they shell you, all over a piece of land, and there's that little robin saying, "No, it's mine."

My cousin Bertie has been 'wooing' a woman called Miriam for years. He uses the word 'wooing'. He says it's the only fair description of what he does to her. He doesn't have a word for what she does to him because if there is any activity on her part it's too minute to detect. She hasn't killed him with a pitch-fork -- that's all the encouragement he needs, and even if she did he'd just think she's playing hard to get and he'd continue the wooing. He's been able to detect more activity in dead people than in her. Detecting activity in dead people is one of his hobbies. If she found out about this she'd leave him with the speed of a pitch-fork flying through the air, or else she'd kill him with a pitch-fork. He'd have words to describe what he's doing when he's dead. 'Wooing' would be one.

He took her on a picnic once. They went to the top of a small hill and they sat in the shade of a tree. For miles around they could see hills and valleys painted in the vivid colours of summer.

They were all alone for over an hour, until a hiker stopped for a chat as he was passing by. He told them about a cave he'd just passed. He heard some strange sounds coming from inside, and he thought he saw a faint light. He was going to go in, but as he was listening to the noises outside he had the keys in the ignition of his imagination and he left the engine running for too long. His mind came up with many different ways in which he could injure or lose his fingers if he went into the cave. He was a pianist, so he was sensitive about his fingers. He imagined a wild animal taking one of them, and he'd chase the animal for hours, or a rock could fall on his hand, or he could put his hand in a hole because of a momentary lapse in the part of his brain that lobbies against the policy of putting his hands into dark holes, and the hole could be the home of something that lives on fingers.

He listed out more of these possibilities. Bertie was fascinated by the insight he could get into people's minds by examining their fears of losing body parts, but he knew it wouldn't be to Miriam's taste, so he interrupted the hiker and asked for directions to the cave. The hiker duly obliged and he continued on his way. Bertie and Miriam packed up the picnic and went to the cave. Bertie's interest in the activities of dead people meant that he always carried a flashlight with him, so he decided to go into the cave, and to his surprise, Miriam wanted to go with him.

They went in, and they'd only gone a few yards when they heard a sound. They both stopped to listen. It was just a faint echo of the original sound, and it was impossible to identify the source. They walked on, and the sounds kept coming, getting louder all the time. They became increasingly certain that the sounds had a human source. They saw a light up ahead. Bertie turned off the flashlight as they approached it.

They stopped where the cave opened onto a huge cavern that was lit by two lights on ledges at either side. Four people stood in a circle in the centre of the cavern (or as Bertie said later, they would have been standing in a square if there was just four of them). They were wearing robes. Every so often one of them said something in a strange language.

There was a powerful lobby group in Bertie's brain that believed in retreat, but it wasn't strong enough to overcome his curiosity. He decided to make their presence known and say they're looking for directions. So he said, "Excuse me." They looked at him and Miriam. "I think we took a wrong turn somewhere and we seem to be lost."

"Where are ye going to?" one of the four said.

"Cahir," Bertie said, even though he wouldn't be seen looking at dead people in Cahir.

After arguing about which would be the best way to go, they were able to give him directions to Cahir.

"Thanks very much," Bertie said. "I hope we didn't disturb ye."

"Not at all," one of them said. "We weren't really doing anything."

After years of looking at Miriam, Bertie knew exactly what would constitute doing nothing, and they certainly weren't doing that. "It's a nice day for it," he said.

"Is the sun still shining?"

"Yeah, it's a beautiful day outside."

"We've been in here for hours."

"Ye should go out. The hills are the perfect place to do nothing."

"That's what I've been saying," one of the four said.

"I suppose we might as well go out," another one said.

They followed Bertie and Miriam out of the cave. It was three o' clock in the afternoon when they got out. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Bertie could see that the people in robes were all young, in their late teens or early twenties. He said, "My name is Bertie and this is Miriam."

The four introduced themselves as Pete, Alan, George and Rachel. George was a woman. Bertie came close to asking where was Timmy the dog, to make up the Famous Five, but he resisted. Instead he asked them if they'd like to join himself and Miriam for the rest of their picnic. They said they'd love to.

They found a suitable spot amongst the wild flowers. They ate cakes and drank tea. Bertie said they'd chosen very interesting attire for doing nothing, and he asked if they were part of a religious order.

"I wouldn't call it 'religious'," Pete said. "I don't know what I'd call it."

Bertie was used to persevering in the face of phrases like 'we weren't really doing anything' and 'I don't know what I'd call it'. He said, "Is it political or is it just a social activity?"

"There might be something political about it. I haven't really thought about that. Lots of things are political when you think about them, and until you think about them they're just something you do to say 'up yours' to the person who said you couldn't do it. You get to say 'up yours' to a lot of people when it's political."

"So ye're not saying 'up yours' to anyone."

"No. What was that other thing you said, besides 'political'?"

"Social?"

"Yeah, social. Not 'social' in a political way. Although maybe it is. I must think about that."

"So it's just a sort of a group activity, is it?"

"That's exactly what it is. We found these robes in George's grandmother's attic and we said we should do something with them."

Bertie always suspected they were doing something. "Where did your grandmother get the robes?" he said to George.

"She's not entirely sure where they came from. It was probably Grandad who got them. He was funny like that."

"What about those words ye were saying?"

"We make them up ourselves," Pete said. "Today I came up with 'newel'. It's a type of butterfly I invented."

"I think a newel is the central post in a spiral stairs."

"Oh well, it's not as if I was going to be able to make a butterfly anyway."

"So ye found the robes and ye decided to go to the cave and come up with words."

"At first we were just going to wear the robes, but then this film-maker asked if he could film us doing what we normally do. He's filming the lives of young people in the area. We didn't really do anything, so we thought we should do something for the camera. Standing in the cave and chanting words seemed like the perfect thing to do when we were wearing robes."

"The film-maker can't have been expecting that."

"No. A friend of ours, Dan, decided to take up pole-vaulting just to have something to do on camera. He's been stuck in a tree since yesterday. Everyone's being doing things for the film."

"Do ye mind spending so much time in the cave?"

"No. At first it seemed a bit odd, but then we found a stash of whiskey and it made the place seem more human."

Bertie didn't know what to say at first. Needless to say, he wanted to see the whiskey, so he said 'lead me to the whiskey', or words to that effect. And they had the desired effect. Bertie didn't know what to say when he saw the light of his torch reflecting off all those bottles in a narrow cave that led off from the cavern.

He thought of Christie, who was an expert on whiskey. He'd be the man to consult on this. Bertie felt that consultation was needed, just to put his mind at rest.

So he took a bottle to Christie. Pete and his friends went with them. Christie tasted it and started crying. He said, "I remember the day Veronica wore a flower in her hair at the funfair as if it was yesterday. It was last week. She was the love of my life. And now she's gone. To a two-day computer course."

"That sounds like the greatest whiskey ever," Bertie said.

"You shouldn't be listening to whiskey as good as this," Christie said. "Have a drink."

"I can't. I'm driving."

Miriam tried it, and a faint smile appeared on her face, a smile that could only be detected by trained observers like Bertie. He nearly fainted when he saw how powerful the whiskey was. He was determined to try it when he got home, so he poured it into another bottle replacing the whiskey with a cheap drink provided by Christie.

Bertie said he'd get a bottle for Christie as well, and they went back to the cave. As they made their way towards the cavern they heard voices. Bertie turned off his flashlight, and they slowly crept forward.

There was something familiar about the sight before them in the cavern. Seven people in robes stood in a circle. Hoods covered their heads. Six of them wore red robes, and one wore black. The one in black seemed to be the leader of this cult, or whatever it was. If they were anything like Pete and his friends they wouldn't know what they are.

Bertie desperately hoped they were like Pete and his friends, but it wasn't to be. They saw a light behind them, and they heard a voice ordering them forward into the cavern.

They did as they were told, and they were followed in by another two members of the cult, one of whom held the light.

The leader (the one in black) said, "Our altar has been defiled by the presence of the uninitiated."

Bertie thought they'd be furious if they found out that the reason for their presence was to bring about the absence of the whiskey, and he didn't want to find out what a furious cult would do to extinguish their presence from the cave. Anyone with whiskey as good as theirs was either close to God or to the devil. Most signs pointed towards the latter. He said, "If..."

"Silence! We have evidence to suggest that our cave has been desecrated by the rituals of pagans."

"We were just talking about this," Pete said. "We don't really do anything. It isn't a religious thing at all."

"That's more-or-less what 'pagan' means," Bertie said.

"Oh right. I was hoping it was a mouse with wings."

Bertie saw a chance to distract the cult. He said to Pete, "What name did you give to the animal who was drinking the whiskey?"

All of the cult members rushed to where they kept the bottles. Pete said, "Was that one the 'carpet bag'?"

He didn't get a chance to answer his own question. Bertie pointed towards the exit. Pete, Alan, George and Rachel all understood what he meant. Miriam was already on her way out of the cave.

They heard the cult chasing them. Bertie heard something about a missing bottle too. As they ran away, Pete suggested going to the film-maker. "I think we're less likely to come to any harm when we're being filmed," he said.

The film-maker was with Aaron and his brother, Craig, who lived on a farm near the cave. The brothers had decided to do something for the camera as well. Bertie and the others saw them in a field near the farm. They were both on horses. They had taken either side of an old wooden door frame, and sharpened the ends with an axe. They got the idea for this from seeing jousting on TV. It was only when they were holding the bits of the door frame on horseback that they realised how dangerous it was, so they were just circling each other as they were being filmed.

Bertie and co stopped when they got to the safety of the camera. They looked back and saw a line of figures in robes, about a hundred yards away. Aaron and Craig couldn't work up the courage to ride towards each other, but they were perfectly willing to charge towards the people hidden beneath the robes. The robes couldn't possibly conceal anything as big as a door frame.

The brothers made a war-like cry as they began their charge, which triggered a cry of terror from the tree between them and the people in the robes. Dan had been clinging to a branch of the tree since the failure of his pole-vaulting experiment on the previous day. He was afraid he'd fall if he loosened his grip. But the fear of the horsemen was greater than the fear of falling, so he finally let go and made his way to the ground.

He ran away screaming, and his scream got louder when he saw the line of people dressed in the red robes, with the leader in black in the centre. He turned around and ran the other way, until he remembered the horsemen and turned back. But the people in robes were still there, so he turned back again.

The cult had remained motionless when the brothers began their charge, but they were scared of this screaming mad man running in circles, having been deposited in front of them by the tree. They turned around and ran.

Dan eventually found the appropriate direction to take
him away from the horsemen and the cult. Aaron and Craig both thought the same thing at the same time: if Dan had pole-vaulted into that tree, then his pole must be on the ground nearby, and if one of them had something much longer than a door frame they could torment the other one for hours.

They got to the tree at the same time, and they fought over the pole, using the bits of the door frame to hit each other. The film-maker got the whole thing on camera. He had been expecting to film teenagers doing nothing, with long silences punctuated by incoherent words that conveyed less meaning than the silence, but with the appropriate editing he could make this film into a thriller.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys the fleeting company of the cuckoo in the cuckoo clock. They were both surprised the first time they saw each other. The surprise faded with each re-appearance of the cuckoo. The wife tried to re-ignite the surprise by putting the moose's Sherlock Holmes hat on his head, and putting a tiny straw hat on the cuckoo. I can go bird-watching from the comfort of my armchair near the fire. I often have to wait to see the cuckoo, but it's rarely surprising when he does appear, unless he's wearing the straw hat or a waistcoat.